Sixty

How to spell sixty

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sixty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sixty mean?

1. otherThe cardinal number equal to six times ten; 60.

Sixty in a sentence

• The speed limit on that stretch of road is sixty miles an hour.

• She retired from the firm at the age of sixty.

Where does sixty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word sixty descends directly from Old English siextig, a compound formed from siex, meaning 'six', and the suffix -tig, which marked a group or multiple of ten. That same -tig element lies behind every English ten-word from twenty through ninety, and it traces back to a Proto-Germanic root tig meaning 'a decade' or 'group of ten'. The core six itself comes from Proto-Germanic sehs and ultimately the Proto-Indo-European root sweks, which also gave Latin its sex (as in 'sextet') and Greek its hex (as in 'hexagon'). Over the centuries the spelling settled with the soft -ty ending while the numeral six kept its older 'x', which is why the word joins the two in a way that feels obvious once you see the pieces. The construction has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times, and English speakers have counted in this exact pattern for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• six (the numeral six)
• -ty (from Old English -tig, denoting a group of ten)